China – Page 2 – EARTH ARCHITECTURE

April 27, 2008

The Earthen Homes of Yongding County

Photo by Barbara Koh/New York Times

From China’s Fujian coast, it’s a grinding drive up narrow roads through villages built around exhausted coal mines to reach the remote mountains of Yongding. Morning mist clings to the slopes of dense trees and brush. Below, in a valley, rests an eerie collection of beige cylindrical structures, one as enormous as a football field. This sci-fi scenery is peculiar to southern China and concentrated in Yongding County. The bizarre edifices, which the Chinese say foreign surveillance has, over the years, mistaken for missile silos and U.F.O.’s, are decades- and centuries-old and made of rammed earth. They are still homes to the Hakka, a Han Chinese nomadic group.

September 21, 2007

Chairman Mao

The childhood residence of Mao Zedong is situated in Shangwuchang of Shaoshanchong. On December 26, 1893, Chairman Mao was born in a simple mud-brick farmhouse, which has 13 rooms in the village of Shangwuchang of Shaoshanchong. Here, Mao spent his childhood and youth, attending school and helped his father with his work.

October 23, 2006

Rammed Earth in Fujian Province

Aerial view of Earth buildings located at Chuxi Village, Xiayang town, Yongding County, in east China’s Fujian Province in this picture taken December 10, 2004. There are about 30,000 earth buildings, dating mostly from the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, in the Fujian Province, southern and eastern China.

September 15, 2006

Atelier FCJZ

Yung Ho Chang, founder of Atelier FCJZ, the first private architectural firm in China, has been part of China’s tremendous transformation. One of Chang’s most notable works is his Split House, completed in 2002. Chang’s sensibility to materials fuses the traditional with modern design by using rammed earth, an ancient method for building.

January 28, 2006

The Construction of Clan Homes in Fujian

The Construction of Clan Homes in Fujian website describes the marvelous multi-storied round dwellings of the Hakka People of China. Be sure to see the detailed drawings of these structures. [ Previously ]

February 13, 2005

Great Wall of China Plundered for Road Paving

Almost 100 meters of the Great Wall in Xinxing village, Zhongwei City was destroyed last month after being plundered for road building materials, according to Ningxia Daily. Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region has been called “the Great Wall Museum” because of its profusion of rammed earth sections, but it only took two nights on January 23 and 24 to wreck the Xinxing stretch.

December 18, 2004

Chinese Rural Architecture

The richly diverse vernacular architectural traditions of China are unrivaled in the world. No nation has as long an unbroken tradition and, with the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, none is as ethnically diverse. China, a nation of 56 nationalities living in disparate natural landscapes with widely varying climatic conditions, is certainly more varied in its housing patterns than is the case in single nations such as the United States or even in comparison with multi-national Europe. View a photo essay of Chinese Rural Architecture by Oliver Laude from ATLAS Magazine.

March 4, 2004

Split House

Located in the mountains of northern Beijing by the Great Wall, the Split House is designed by perhaps China’s most internationally acclaimed architect, Yung Ho Chang of Beijing’s first private architecture practice, Atelier Feichang Jianzhu. The house is split in the middle to bring in the scenery. A courtyard, or outdoor living area, is enclosed by the mountains on one side and the house, with its two split halves, on the other. The line between the natural landscape and manmade architecture is thus blurred. The angle between the two halves can be adjusted to fit the house onto various hill sites. The structure is made of laminated wood with rammed earth walls, which is well insulated with minimum environmental impact.